whips

This last week has witnessed a flurry of developments and information drops as the countdown to July 1--the official take-off for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA)--continues apace. Just last Friday, for example, HISA representatives fielded questions in an online industry forum, while the law's draft Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) rules have been issued for public comment. HISA's official website can be found here, while the online registration portal can be found here. Aside from providing a cheat sheet to help guide industry participants through the launch, TDN...

The Week in Review, by Bill Finley We will need a bigger sample size before being able to fully evaluate how Monmouth's experiment with whip-free racing has fared. But this much is certain: Three days in and after hysterical fomenting from the pro-whip side of the argument, the whip-less races amounted to a big nothingburger. That is to say there were no incidents, no major form reversals, no mass boycotts from the horseplayers, etc. Perhaps this was just round one in what figures to be a long, drawn-out battle that...

The New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) teleconference meeting Tuesday resulted in the adoption of four new Thoroughbred-related rules and the proposal of two others. Even though it was the NYSGC's first meeting since the COVID-19 crisis halted the state's racing industry in March, the five commissioners who participated did not discuss the pandemic or any aspect of return-to-racing plans for New York tracks. The only time the coronavirus got an oblique mention was during the reading into the record of a proposed emergency rule regarding changing qualifying race requirements...

Whip rule changes that would have barred jockeys and exercise riders from choosing, carrying and using their own personal riding crops in races and workouts hit several snags on Wednesday, leading the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) to postpone voting on the measure in an effort to seek more input and fine-tune the rule's language before potentially bringing it back for reconsideration in February. Although the broad intent of proposed amendments to CHRB Rule 1685 was to codify riding crop specifications to more humane and safety-centric standards, discussion of the...